Twice a year, in the fall and in the spring, Sloan students organize charity auctions. Each “ocean” (the 60-person cohort with which students take their first-semester core classes) selects a charity to support and identifies items to be auctioned, from lunch with a professor to a home-cooked meal by a student to more unusual offerings, like having a professor chauffeur you to class in his classic car. First-year oceans compete to see which one can raise the most money, and second-year students organize a similar auction. As a group the auctions raise close to $100k per year for such charities as the California Wildfires Fund and Children of Uganda. In 2008, the Friday Night Supper Program (FNSP), a Cambridge-area nonprofit organization that serves free meals to approximately 200 guests every Friday, was the recipient of over $8,000. In 2009, oceans raised between $4000 and $16000 each, for such charities as Community Water Solution, Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, The Wellness Community of Greater Boston, and St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital. Items up for bid included shaving a classmate’s moustache, access to a classmate’s beach house in Brazil, another in the Dominican Republic and another in the Cayman Islands, three female classmates coming to class dressed in Hooters costumes, an afternoon with an interior decorator re-doing your apartment, and a VIP package at a local pub. As you submit your application to Sloan, you may want to also consider what you can auction and prepare your bids as well.
Read the full article: Friday Factoid: Sloan’s Charity Auctions